Bruce Taylor

Here's a fun thing! Prof. Mike Hickerson @hickerlab.bsky.social has created Phylodiet, an app that reveals "How Much of the Tree of Life is on your plate": mjhickerson.github.io/phylodiet/ap... Enter your meal, and see how the ingredients are related. #phylogeny #TreeOfLife #Evolution

One species in our new paper is named after Joe Purdon, an Ontario farmer who nurtured the woodland fen now known as the Purdon Conservation Area. He focused on the Showy Lady’s Slipper orchid, but conserved a whole ecosystem, including his new namesake: Galeripora purdoni. #orchids #peatlands

Our new preprint is out! We’ve made some updates to Arcellidae, a family of shelled amoebae that build tiny gold pavilions out of their own secreted proteinaceous goop. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... #ProtistsOnSky #amoebae #taxonomy #peatlands

In Montreal to launch my new collection of poems. It has an amoeba on the cover! vehiculepress.com/shop/we-drov... Great to reconnect with old poetry friends, and meet some new ones.

Weird word of the day: "kleptosquamy." The testate amoeba Awerintzewia cyclostoma steals scales from other amoeboid organisms to build its own shell. This one has robbed Quadrulella, Netzelia, various euglyphids, and even an Acanthocystis. Kleptosquamy! #amoebae #ProtistsOnSky #biology #nature

The amoeba Difflugia bacillifera builds its shell from things that contain silica, and it is not particular about the source. These ones have incorporated whole shells from another testate amoeba (Euglypha), along with diatoms, algal cysts and chunks of rock. #Amoebae #ProtistsOnSky #peatlands

Q. You're going through dishes of bogwater, hunting a certain thing. You find a bloom of a species you were collecting two months ago. You already have enough of those and don't need more. What do you do? A. Collect them anyway! We wants it, we needs it, must have the precious! #ProtistsOnSky

I broke some shells of Galeripora artocrea, to look at their algal hostages...and accidentally created Pac-Man amoebae. #amoebae #peatlands #ProtistsOnSky

Amoebae in the family Arcellidae make their shells from secreted vesicles of organic material that become hexagonal when pressed together. When a shell is broken, we can see inside the stiff-walled "areoles" that give it strength and durability. #ProtistsOnSky #Amoebae #peatlands

Promethea = PROvora + MEteora + HEmimastigophora. The new supergroup, unifying previously “orphan” lineages with gene-rich mitogenomes. Position of #telonemids is still uncertain. #protistsonsky tinyurl.com/yk9xkt49

Last day in the field...time to wind down, pack up, put my stuff away. Of course, the sneaky shelled amoeba I've been chasing all week SUDDENLY decides to start blooming like crazy. #ProtistsOnSky #amoebae

In an unconscionable decision, the Smithsonian Institute has decided to no longer support the Biodiversity Heritage Library from 1 Jan 2026. Please someone step up and take it over.

BHL contains the foundation of our understanding of biodiversity. 🌱 🌏 🦎 📖 🪱 🧪 🦉 There are countless researchers, educators, policy makers, fields, institutions, databases & species that rely on BHL. Please share our Call for Support as widely as you can: blog.biodiversitylibrary.org/2025/06/tran...

But why does an amoeba need horns on its shell? They're quite carefully made, with flat plates neatly glued around them (possibly scales from another organism). The spheres around the mouth are siliceous resting cysts of chrysophyte algae. #ProtistsonSky #MEvoSky #Amoebae #Peatlands

iNat getting cozier with generative AI, not sure that's going to play well with everyone.

Zone of inhibition always makes me feel so excited about science lol

Many amoebae incorporate diatoms in their shells, but Cylindrifflugia bacillariarum is the master. Third and fourth pics are close views of the glue that holds it all together. #ProtistsonSky #Amoebae #Peatlands

An amoeba with teeth. When building its shell, Netzelia corona selects sharp grains of quartz and positions them around its aperture with the tips pointing inward. I took a few closeups, yesterday. #ProtistsonSky #amoebae #peatlands #MEvoSky

hey everyone! i made a list of some useful starter packs (primarily biology/earth sciences with a few bonus things thrown in) to share with friends who have joined bsky in the last week and thought it may be useful for some people here too! 🌍🧪 #SciSky #BioSky docs.google.com/document/d/1...

Recently, we described a "new" species of amoeba. It's just been found it again, 700 km away. I suspect it's common in eastern N.A., but not noticed until it had a name. One reason to do taxonomy: describing a thing makes it visible! www.inaturalist.org/observations... #taxonomy #systematics

Some specimens of a shelled amoeba called Heleopera sphagni, from a northern fen. The shell is assembled from jagged siliceous plates, but where did they come from? Stolen from a prey organism, or generated by the amoeba itself? I have no idea! #protistsonsky #amoebae #peatlands

🚨New preprint out! We show that Arcella spp., a shell-bearing amoeba, controls the abundance of the filamentous bacterium Ca. Microthrix parvicella, the main culprit behind sludge bulking in wastewater treatment plants. Interested in applicability of protists? Read along! #protistsonsky #microsky 🧵👇

Igor FTW, again! Amazing photographer, anatomist, microscopist, artist.

The crush of new grant cancellations hasn't let up. If your grant was terminated (or your app was pulled) please use this Google Form👇 to submit details for tracking purposes. Multiple advocacy efforts are moving forward, but we must must must know more about what grants were cancelled and why.

🚨 New paper alert! 🚨 A robustly rooted tree of eukaryotes sheds light on their deep evolutionary ancestry—suggesting that the Last Eukaryotic Common Ancestor (LECA) may have had an excavate-like cell architecture. 🧵🔬 (1/) www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Do #protistsonsky know that there is a protistology YouTube out there? And almost no subscribers. Meahwile Sina Adl is describing how he wrote a Protistology Book! Which is amazing! youtu.be/QfMxq1Pygcw?...

I’m so excited! 🥳 Our new article just came out, describing a brand-new genus and four new species of #testate #amoebae from #Mongolia! #protists 🔬🌍 It was such a pleasure to collaborate with Ferry Siemensma – truly an inspiring scientist! 🙃 👉 authors.elsevier.com/a/1kP5K3K1I1...

New isolates from eukaryote's closest archaeal relative: ‘Hodarchaeales’!! Syntrophic microaerotolerant peptide-degrading anaerobic archaea w/ simple cell structure & protrusions. Features conserved across the phylum provide new insight into our ancestor’s biology! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

As a very small act of resistance, which is to continue creating reliable science content for non-scientists, I’ve decided to revive my podcast from 2022. The first episode of season 2 will be released on March 10th on all podcast platforms!

Avert your eyes if you have "trypophobia"! Here are some close views of the beautiful organic "glue" the amoeba Difflugia microclaviformis uses to cement together bits of quartz and diatoms, to build its shell. #ProtistsonSky #amoebae #peatlands #NatureisLit

This is a room where we turn very modest salaries and budgets (and lots of coffee) into new knowledge, life-saving innovations, and technology that feeds business growth. It's literally the loom that spins hay into gold but these numpties are suddenly worried about the cost of hay.

the third chapter of my PhD is now published! 🚨 We describe the protist symbiont diversity of the termite species Reticulitermes tibialis. This project was performed in a course-based undergraduate research experience (CURE) which was super fun 😊 #protistsonsky authors.elsevier.com/a/1kaMa56A9x...

reposting from 𝕏 bc you know... @KensukeTadome (not on 🔵bsky) on Aug 10, 2023: "Cross section of 𝘙𝘶𝘴𝘢𝘷𝘴𝘬𝘪𝘢 𝘦𝘭𝘦𝘨𝘢𝘯𝘴 🧐 As you can see, lichens are a symbiotic relationship between algae and fungi. The algae sparkle and are beautiful ☺️✨" #SymbioSky #Lichen

A shelled amoeba we recently described, Arcella prismatica. These ones were collected from Mer Bleue Bog, in Ottawa. So far, it's only been found there and in a subarctic mire in Chisasibi, James Bay. #ProtistsOnSky #TestateAmoebae #peatland #MerBleueBog #Ottawa

Stromatolites xkcd.com/3046

Work with microbes? Consider the risks!

The world is full of crazy and sad news, but here is a protein that localizes to only one of the two flagella

In case some people have missed it, I'm re-posting a link to our paper on the Anaeramoeba-Desulfobacter symbiotic system. This is one of the papers from my lab that I'm most proud of...and a huge amount of the credit goes to @jonhultqvist.bsky.social !!! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A perfect little thing, crafted by a cunning amoeboid. This shell was collected in a calcareous fen near Winnipeg, Canada. It's the handiwork (pseudopodiwork?) of the cercozoan amoeba Scutiglypha scutigera (=Euglypha scutigera). #ProtistsOnSky #TestateAmoebae #peatland

Forged termite symbiont: Trichomitopsis. Photo taken by @fburki.bsky.social. #sculpture #art #protistsonsky #sciart

Meet Arcella prismatica, a new species of shelled amoeba from peatlands in suburban Ottawa and James Bay. doi.org/10.22621/cfn... #ProtistsOnSky #Protists #Amoebae

A nice book - just in case one needs reminding that in biology,very little is binary

Stoked about this manuscript, many years in the making. We present an original resource of ~700 highly curated plastid MAGs of marine pelagic algae. Among these we found a novel deep branching group of plastid genomes; we informally call them leptophytes www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

The shelled amoeba Zivkovicia compressa, divided internally by a central pillar and a thin-walled "diaphragm" with two round openings. Maybe for defense against parasitic rotifers and other micro-villains? Last pic shows its rather fancy organic cement. #ProtistsOnSky #Protists #Amoebae

Trinema scutarius sp. nov. (Siemensma et Łuców, 2025) 👉 arcella.nl/trinema-scut... 📜 authors.elsevier.com/a/1kP5K3K1I1... SEM photographs by Izabela Zawiska #TestateAmoebae #Protist #igsopas #peatland #Mongolia